B2B Podcasting brings you special episode with our CEO Kap Chatfield, who shares 11 incredible tips for your guest experience. If you’re ready to elevate your guest experience, then check out our latest episode. 
Learn how to create the best featured guest experience for your B2B show Implement systems that will help your guest participate and enjoy the process Take the time to research your guest and what they’ve accomplished Intentionally promote the thought leadership of your guest to build long-lasting relationships
00:00 - 05:01 | A show marketing model is a great way to build relationships and business 05:01 - 08:12 | The systems you create for your show and guest are crucial to an enjoyable process 08:12 - 13:20 | The pre-show call and research on your guest facilitates your questions 13:20 - 20:26 | Use your show content to promote your guest on all your platforms
“A B2B podcast is not just a marketing strategy—it’s a sales strategy where you can create a show experience that turns featured guests into buyers.” - Kap Chatfield, CEO of Rveal Media “In the B2B world people recognize that content is king. It’s valuable if you can create content around the thought leadership of a featured guest.” - Kap Chatfield, CEO of Rveal Media “Your featured guest wants to know how being a part of your show is going to help them reach their target audience.” - Kap Chatfield, CEO of Rveal Media “Do NOT enter your featured guest to a sales sequence after they’ve been on your show.” - Kap Chatfield, CEO of Rveal Media
Full Transcription:
Kap Chatfield 00:00
Starting a B2B video podcast is not just a marketing strategy. It really is a sales strategy. And I want to talk with you today specifically about how you can create a show experience that turns featured guests into buyers.
Narrator 00:15
Rveal Media presents B2B Podcasting.
Kap Chatfield 00:35
Hey, welcome back to B2B Podcasting. I'm your host, Kat Chatfield, the CEO of Rveal Media. Today, we're going to be talking about how to leverage your video podcast for your company, not just as a marketing tool, because a lot of us only think about content as a marketing play. But specifically, how you can leverage the show marketing model as a sales tool to build new relationships with target accounts really quickly. And also to close deals a lot faster. I'm not just saying this from theory, by the way, we are leveraging this for ourselves as a company. And we're even doing this for some of our customers. Some of our customers are doing the video marketing, excuse me, this show marketing strategy as a demand generation strategy. But a lot of our customers are also using this for their sales teams. They're using this to begin conversations with target accounts a lot faster, building those relationships, and eventually putting them in the sales pipeline and then closing deals. Specifically, the reason why this is so effective, is because when you're reaching out to your target accounts, to decision makers of these organizations that are typically bigger enterprise level companies, they very, very, not often I should say, they're going to be giving you a 15 minute to a 30 minute call to talk about your product or service, just on the fly just because you called them, you emailed them, they're busy people and their time is really valuable to them. And so in order to get that initiated, or that relationship initiated, it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of touch points, in order to get that ball rolling. But what we've discovered and what our customers are seeing is that when you create a remarkable show experience, and your first touch with the decision maker, is not to get them on a 15 minute call to talk about your product, but to get them on a 60 minute video call to talk about themselves. Most people say "yes", we're seeing it all over the place. Because people recognize in the B2B world, that content is king. If you can create content, and if you can have other people invite you on their show, to create content around your thought leadership, that's valuable to them. And so when you have a show, it becomes an amazing way to initiate and accelerate relationships, so that you can eventually nurture them to create deals. The challenge, though, is that not all shows are created equal and there's a lot of strategy that goes into play in order to create a show experience that actually ends up turning into business for your organization. So today, I'm going to talk about 11 tips, 11 specific tips that will help you create a show experience that actually turns featured guests into buyers. Let's go through them right away.
Kap Chatfield 03:19
Number one, the first thing is to have a clear show narrative and audience that you're trying to reach. So with your show, the goal should not be to be a generalist show. The value of us having access to the internet is all of us have a voice now that we can actually, you know, we can put our voice out there put our message out there and get seen by our ideal customers. The downside, though, is that everybody has access to the same tools that you have access to. So the internet is more crowded and more noisy than ever. And it's more important for you in order to cut through that noise, to not be a generalist with your message. But to be a specialist, to be very laser focused and to not consider it even as broadcasting your message. but narrow casting your message. Have a clear message and a very clear audience. The reason why this is so important for your featured guests, is because they want to be able to know specifically how being a part of your show is going to help them reach their audience. So you're gonna have to be very strategic too when you're thinking about "what's our show?" "who we're trying to reach? And who can we invite on our show that's going to be beneficial to that audience?" And that audience is going to be beneficial towards as well. You got to be pretty strategic about this. But the more laser focused and the clearer you can be, the more people are going to say yes, when you invite them on your show that actually fit that whole profile, because their message is going to resonate with that audience. And that featured guests is going to see themselves being a part of that whole ecosystem and they're going to see their thought leadership being valuable, a lot easier. So you want to be clear about the show narrative and the audience you're trying to reach.
Kap Chatfield 05:01
Number two, have promotional material in place to get the guest excited. So sometimes this could actually look like creating like a 60 second video teaser or video trailer for the whole show. Even if you haven't launched any episodes yet, I'm telling you this from personal experience, because we when we did our show B2B Podcasting. And we were inviting guests on the show, we had a number of guests ask us, "Hey, do you have any content that I can see, before I commit to this thing?" Which makes sense because they want to see what the flow is going to be like? What's the quality of the content? Is it a general narrative that they see themselves being a part of? But if you don't even have a single episode yet, how are you going to present to them that content? Well, for us, we didn't have that content. We had a teaser, a 60 second teaser, and we also had a PDF, a single one pager, which might be easier for you to put together. But we had a one pager, one page PDF, casting the vision for the show, and also explaining clearly, what are we going to expect from our guests. And what's the content that they're going to get out of it. We also had on our PDF, five heads, like five little headshots, of people that we had already had on our show that we had previously recorded. So that that this person that we're inviting on could see themselves as being a part of that panel of thought leaders. And then there's this like association effect of, I want to be associated with those people as well. So having that promotional material in place, it presents an amazing first impression to the people that you want to invite on to your show. So I'd recommend building that out. Okay?
Kap Chatfield 06:37
Number three, create a streamlined system that gets your guests acclimated to the to the whole process, easier. Systems are super important. So instead of just saying, hey, let's find a time on your calendar, what time works for you to talk about the show? Having calendar links, having meeting links, whether using Calendly, or HubSpot, or Salesforce, using the meeting link component of these software's to get people scheduled into your system a lot faster, it makes it so much easier for everybody. In fact, one thing that's really cool to do when you're creating a meeting link, is actually create a form for them to fill out when they're scheduling time. Don't make it an overwhelming form, but even ask questions that you would want for them to answer on the show in that form. Things like, you know, where do you work? What's your job title? What's your experience? Or maybe questions you want them to answer as far as like the story that they'll share or the thought leadership that they'll share? Even down to Hey, what links do you want to share with our audience so that they can get in touch with you? Having all that in your form makes it so much easier, so you don't have to chase that information down after you've actually done the recording. Email templates, also, creating email templates you're going to send to all of the different future guests. Email templates for inviting them, email templates for rescheduling, email templates to get them their content, email templates to let them know when the episode is going out, email templates to say thank you, all of these touches, make a really great experience for your customer, because it's thorough, it's thought out and it's a checklist that makes it super easy for you so that you can actually scale this process. Okay, so that's number three, create a streamlined system that gets your guests acclimated faster and easier.
Kap Chatfield 08:12
Number four, here's number four, pre-show call. Create a pre-show call experience that gives them a way out. One of the things that I do for our featured guests, is before we get them on a 60 minute call, I say hey, can we do a 15-minute pre-show call? And I'm very clear upfront, the purpose of this pre show call is to give you and to give me a way out if we don't feel like this is a good fit. Because there's no point in jumping into a 60 minute video recording and eating up all that time, if we don't even feel like this is going to be a good use of our time, or we're even going to put out the episode. So the 15 minute pre show call allows me to get to know the future guests a little bit better, and allows them to get to know me so that they know a little bit more about our show and what we're about. I will also say as a sales tool, this is a very strategic time to actually talk about your business, but not to sell yourself. When you're on the pre show call, you should position the call like this, "Hey, thank you so much for scheduling the pre show call, I really only want to take 15 minutes of your time. The purpose of this call is to give you a way out if you feel like at the end of this, this isn't going to be a good fit for you". Side note, if you say this more often than not, they're going to still say yes to the show. But people like to be in control. They want to feel like okay, I'm not committing to something that I'm not quite ready to say yes to. So put them at ease. And then you could say this, this is what I would always say on that pre show call. I say "let me tell you a little bit about my business because it will help the show that we're creating make a lot more sense". So I'm not trying to sell them but I am trying to plant a seed about what we do. So I tell them a little bit about what we do. And then I tell them about the show. Here's what the show is about. Here's the typical format, and here's why I invited you on okay? And then we'll start to talk about their thought leadership. But think about this, I talk about the business a little bit, I plant the seed. And then we continue to move forward with the logistics of the show. I've had a number of times where somebody reached out to me or on the pre show call, I tell them about our business just to plant the seed and then after the pre show call, they say, "I'm super interested in doing the show, let's do it. But I'm also interested in your business, let's talk about it later". So even just getting the opportunity to talk to them and invite them on the show, it's created an opportunity for us to talk about business later. So it's just, it's an amazing tool. It's not a hack. It's not about manipulating people. It's not about deceiving people, it's about building the right relationships faster by creating an experience that's actually valuable to them. A great show experience where they get to position themselves as the thought leader, and then you provide a ton of content after that they can use for their own marketing purposes. So that's really important. Number four, providing a really excellent pre show call that gets them on the same page, you on the same page, and you talk about your business just a little bit. But more more, most importantly, you're creating a narrative and a flow and a direction for the episode that you're inviting them on. And you're also showing, hey, I want you to talk about this because you've already done the research on who they are and what you want them to talk about, that's going to help them see that you are really serious about having them on the show for a specific reason. Okay, so that's number four.
Kap Chatfield 11:28
Number five, do some more research on them before you actually do the recording. So you want to have a little bit of research done so you can kind of have a direction to talk about in the pre show call. Before you actually do the recording, spend a little bit more time reviewing their content, listening to some other episodes they've been on reading a book, I had a guy on our show, who was really impressed to have on our show who had said yes, he had over 100,000 followers on LinkedIn, he had written a sales book. And I made a point to read his entire book before having him on the show. He didn't ask me to do that. But I wanted to show that I was serious about having him on the show. And I also leveraged the content he had already created, as you know, topics and questions to talk about in our recording. If you do this, you're going to build a way better rapport with the featured guest that you're bringing on your show. So do a little bit more research on them before actually doing the recording.
Kap Chatfield 12:22
Number six, having a showrunner help facilitate the recording really makes a remarkable experience. Because when the person is hopping onto the virtual recording, all this is virtual, by the way, when they're hopping into the virtual recording, they see you, they see somebody who's going to be taking notes, this person is also like saying, "Hey, welcome to the recording studio. I'm here to help you, the showrunner, I'm going to make sure your microphone is good, your videos good, your lighting is good. I'm going to be in the background, I'll let you guys know how the recording goes." What you're doing is you're showing a professionalism, that this isn't just like a zoom call, you're actually really trying to make sure that this is produced properly, that this is a business tool. This isn't just something you're doing as a hobby. Nothing wrong with hobbyists, by the way, but if you're doing this for business purposes, it just communicates a whole nother level of intentionality. And having that showrunner also be someone that can stay in touch with them too, and provide the content later. Just a really helpful tool to have more touches than just you as the host. Okay, so that's number six.
Kap Chatfield 13:20
Number seven, turning the content around in a timely manner and then also just managing expectations. Letting the customer excuse me letting the featured guests know, when is that content actually going to be turned around? When's the episode going to be published? I've had most of my featured guests asked me hey, when is this? When is this episode actually going live? When can I see the content? And you know, as long as you're managing the expectations well, people usually are not super, you know, upset if it's gonna take a little while. We had so much content in the pipeline for our first season of this show that I had to tell our featured guests, hey, it might not be three months before this thing goes live. But they were happy to at least have an expectation of when it will go live. That way, if three months passed by, they're not thinking did that person just takes 60 minutes of my time and didn't intend to ever publish the episode? You don't want that for the future guests. It definitely, it's not good for your reputation with them, trust me. So make sure that you're clear about when that content is going out. And meeting those deadlines and at least communicating with them if for whatever reason, you have to switch some things around.
Kap Chatfield 14:27
Number eight, make the content remarkable and make it about them. This is so important because you're having the person on your show, because they want they want a personal PR play to this whole thing. They want to be able to put out more content about themselves, establish themselves as a thought leader. And so when you turn the content around, make them look good. When you're putting together the thumbnail make them look good. If you're taking screenshots, make sure that they look good. Make sure you're not getting screenshots of them like looking off camera or having a weird face. You want to present them in the best light possible so they're excited to share this content. And you also want to create, if you're sending them like micro videos from the full episode, which is what we do for our customers, you want to make sure that you're getting micro videos of them talking about what they care about, because they're not, it's, if you're sending them micro videos of you as the host talking, that's not valuable to them, that creates a really bad experience for them. So make sure it's all about them and all about their thought leadership and present it to them in a way that makes them flattered that they were a part of that experience with you. So that's number eight, make the content remarkable.
Kap Chatfield 15:35
Number nine, give them the content on a landing page. This is so strategic and tactical, but it actually is really helpful. Instead of just sending them an email with a dropbox link or a file sharing link for all that content, create a duplicatable landing page. So you create a template you can read, you can replicate it for every new featured guest you have on, but create a landing page where they go to the landing page, it's well designed, there's this whole flow to it, it talks about them and their show and, and it has like a link on that landing page for them to download the content. But on that landing page, it also talks a little about about your business just a little bit more. It gives them an opportunity to schedule a demo with you if they want to learn more about your business. Again, the point isn't to sell them, the point is to just give them the opportunity if they're interested. We've done this for our featured guests and we've seen people review the content, watch the video about our business to learn a little bit more. And this has helped nurture that conversation for those that were actually interested in learning a little bit more about our business.
Kap Chatfield 16:40
Number 10, publish the content and promote them. So once you've actually gotten to the place where you're ready to publish it, publish it, and promote them, publish the content on your own LinkedIn page, make a point of tagging them, make a point of putting them on blast, and really express the gratitude of having for having them on your show. And then also be emphasizing and validating all of the things that they say in that episode. And really just, you know, establish them as the thought leader and use your own personal brand to do it. Be the stage for that individual. Okay?
Kap Chatfield 17:12
Finally, number 11, keep nurturing the relationship with them. Sometimes the relationship begins really fast when and when you know, as far as like entering the sales pipeline, like I said, even from the pre show call, some people might enter the sales pipeline right away. And that's great. Other people, it might take a little bit longer. If you're in sales, you understand this, sales can be a long game, a long term investment, right? It's a long game play. And so you want to be hot, you want to have the mindset of I'm using the show to establish relationships with people that I can then nurture over time. I don't necessarily need to close this right away. But I am going to be faithful to continue to follow up with them, see how they're doing, see how I can help or see if there's any more content that we can create together, maybe some people are going to be reoccurring guests on your show, especially if your audience really likes the content that they put out. That should be that should be part of your strategy is thinking about how to initiate further relationship with them. But I will make this really strong caveat. I have because I haven't done this but I've had featured guests on my show who have said this very thing. Do not enter them into a sales sequence after they've been on your show. I repeat, do not enter them into a sales sequence after they've been on your show. I've had so many featured guests on my show who have talked about this, who have said that they've been invited onto another person or another company's podcast and they knew right away that the only reason they were invited onto that show was because that person wanted to sell them at the end of the show experience. That is a really easy way for you to kill your reputation with the featured guests that you've had on the show. You want to be genuine, you want to make this about them, you want to provide them value. If you provide them value and you're not looking just for a transaction at the end of the recording, it's going to help you out, it's going to help your reputation out, it's gonna help your relationship. And it could, it could ultimately turn into a business deal for you. However, if you leave a bad taste in their mouth, because it looks like you were just using that featured guest experience, just to sell them, it's going to kill the deal for you and it's going to kill any opportunity for you to have relationship with them in the future. Don't come off too eager, don't come off too, don't come off manipulative. Don't be manipulative. Make it about serving your audience. Be honest, even with your featured guest say "Hey, this is how we want to serve our audience. We want to do this for our business, this is going to be valuable to us. But we also feel like this is going to be valuable to you because we feel like you have something to provide to this audience" and they'll get you'll get exposure in front of them and you'll get all the content. Just be honest about that whole value proposition. Most people will say yes, because they want the content themselves. And if you do it right it can lead to an amazing business relationship down the road.
Kap Chatfield 20:03
So that's it for today. I know that was a lot to cover. 11 tips, 11 tips about how to create a remarkable featured guest experience that wins business.
